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As I suspected, I had fun… but it wiped me out. We all ended up staying there for about an hour and a half, dodging the rain under the shelter house now and then as needed. Unfortunately, Aunt Sharon forgot to bring her packet of pictures. 😐😑 She asked if I would come out towards the end of the week to take her to see Mom anyway, so I’ll just grab them from her then and figure out what she wants to do with everything.

Lemme see if I can remember who all was there. 🤔 Me, Sharon, Jim, Vicki, Toni, Wendi, Gloria, Jamie, Chris, Me, Matt, Anna, Jamie, and Mark. 😳 I think that’s it, although it felt like more people than that at times. I tried to absorb as many people’s stories as possible while they were talking, but you know how it is. 😏 It was nice though. And they made a bit of a fuss about me showing up at one of the family “things” since I often don’t, but it was all in fun… and they’re not wrong. 😅

I allowed myself to zone out as I watched the ducks, geese, and babies every now and then. 😵🦆🦆 All of the critters helped to make it sort of peaceful once you reached the edge of where all the picnic tables are. I even sat right next to some geese for a minute and none of them tried to give me the business. 😄 But I’m back home now and trying to get back into “home” mode, and at least right now I’m looking optimistically towards tomorrow and some of the things that I want to do.

When I talked to Aunt Sharon yesterday, she mentioned that she had finished writing what she wanted for her “family history” project that she’s been working on. I think it’s going to be a brief scrapbook or storybook from her, Mom, and Uncle Jay’s childhood. 🙂 It started with us just talking about how so many old photos are unlabeled, and sometimes difficult to figure out who’s who and what’s going on, so she decided that she would start writing down memories that would then go with certain pictures, to eventually be assembled into a document that she could print and share.

It sounds like the writing is done, it’s been typed into a word document, and now she just needs to have the matching photos scanned and put into the it… and I think that’s where I’m supposed to come in. 🤨 It shouldn’t be too much trouble to do, it’s just getting the oomph to spend an afternoon over there talking it all through and making sure each picture is positioned with the right story. 🤓🔎📕 I mean, I absolutely love the idea, so all of us “younger” people will get to hear the stories and see the things that we might not have known about otherwise… so hopefully it all comes together.

If nothing else, at least I’ll be able to scan all of the pics that she gives me today, kinda like how I just did with all of the photos (of Mom) that she loaned me a few weeks back. I’d love to snap my fingers and have every old photo just magically appear on my hard drive, but at least as we do this little bits at a time they’ll start getting archived and saved for future Shepherd / Riecky / Snead / Batina / Klingler / Burnside / Meridith / Orlowicz generations to see. 😁

As decent as I felt yesterday, that’s about how crappy I feel today. 😔 I’m not really sure why, either. I got a call a few hours ago from Aunt Sharon, asking me if I wanted to join them at Cenci Lake for a little Mother’s Day get-together tomorrow. I was already psyching myself up to go in town to see Mom and Dad, so I really dunno how that’s gonna go yet. 😐 I probably won’t know exactly what I’m gonna do until I’m in my car, backing out of my driveway. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Hopefully tomorrow feels better than today.

After watching a couple Christmas specials last night, before it reached midnight I got into the shelf with my DVDs on it and dusted off “Home Alone” for us to watch as well. 😊 Surprisingly, and I have no idea how she managed this, but Cassi said that she remembers watching it within the first couple of years of it coming out – but that she hadn’t seen it since then. 🤔🤨 At least not as in sitting down and watching more than a few minutes of it at a time. 🙂 So that was kinda neat, watching a movie that me and everyone else on the planet have seen dozens of times, and seeing her experiencing it with new eyes.

Since neither of us had any obligations to wake up to, we both ended up sleeping in. I slept unusually soundly in the bedroom, while she slept out in the living room – where Maven decided to wake her up just a couple of times, probably like “Hey. I know who you are, but why are you in my house right now?” 😼 We didn’t set any alarms, and just figured that I’d end up taking her home whenever we got up and around.

But before we really had a chance to put that non-plan into motion, her grandma decided that she was going to do a real Christmas dinner in the evening and asked if I’d like to join them as well. 😳🙂 Even though Cassi and I aren’t together anymore it was nice that her grandma thought enough about me to include me, and since I’d be taking Cassi back up there anyway I accepted the offer. 😁👍🏻 So we spent much of the afternoon just watching Netflix until it was time to go up and get the evening started. By the time everything was said and done I didn’t end up getting back home until almost 10pm.

On the way home I was thinking about what a difference time has made. When Genesee and I were together, my family had gatherings for nearly every other holiday on the calendar each year. 😋🎉 And for Genesee, it wasn’t something that she was used to, but in a good way… my family became her family and she looked forward to every gathering we had. This year… this year was the first year since I’ve been alive, I believe, where there wasno multi-family Christmas get-together in our family. 😐 (I’m sure it was killing Toni. She tries so hard to keep things like they’ve always been.)

Now, folks in Cassi’s family don’t always get on well. 😏 I don’t mean it in a bad way, but just in a way where I wouldn’t necessarily count on them having a family gathering for Christmas. So that’s what made me smile, originally thinking that it was just going to be like any other Monday today, yet there I was eating an awesome dinner with all of them. For a moment it made me think about how Genesee appreciated our family doing that sort of thing, and now that my local family is no longer doing it, it was me that was appreciating being invited to someone else’s family holiday thing. 🙂

But I’m ending Christmas Day feeling better about things than I thought I would. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I had company for the eve and day that I hadn’t expected, some neat presents from Genesee (🎅🏻) that I’d never even seen before but were perfect for me, I got to sleep for about 10 hours straight, and then I was surprised again with the family dinner when I had projected that I’d be back home and just moping around the house by myself by that point.

I guess my cousin Shannon and her hubby are hosting an extended family reunion out at their place this afternoon. She’s texted me about it a couple times in the past few days, as has Toni, but I’m afraid I that have to disappoint yet again by letting them know that I won’t be going. 😞 Being depressed enough as it is, going out there and seeing everyone that I haven’t seen in forever would unfortunately and unintentionally just make it worse.

Think about it. Every interaction that I’d get involved in, it would likely start with “Hey, how have you been?” “What have you been up to?” “How’s your mom and dad doin?” or some other friendly inquiry to which I don’t have a positive answer. 😟 And I lack the ability at the moment to just “fake it” and reply with a convincing “Pretty good, how ’bout you?” “Ahh, not much. Not much.” or “You know how it is, about as good as can be expected.”

I can just see a situation where if I wasn’t careful, I could end up being an absolute buzzkill to the get-together by blurting out detailed truthful answers – and that’s no good for anyone. (Plus, when people ask how you’ve been, they usually don’t really wanna know how you’ve actually been.) So the best choice is to send my apologies, thank her for inviting me anyway, and just stay away so they can have their happy gathering.